Vault Children
by trashlady
Summary: It's been two decades since the Hyperion Wars. Angel, Roland, Riley, and Priscilla are children of Vault Hunters who must contend with their parents' legacies and the heavy burden of heroic namesakes in a post-war Pandora. (A cast of original characters and guest appearances from old ones as a new generation takes Pandora by bulletstorm) [Priscilla debuts in the next chapter!]
1. It's a Start

So, you want to hear a story, eh? How about one where the children of the Vault Hunters struggle with the weight of their parents' legacies? One where the spawn of heroes have to find their own glory in a post-war Pandora? Ha! Don't think that it's a happy place just because the wars are over. This planet is a shrine to danger and death. It's no place for a hero, but heroes are made here anyway.

* * *

The black marble wall shone like a tinted mirror in the bright sun of Pandora. Standing proudly amidst the tall buildings of Sanctuary, its etchings gave thanks to the many live lost during both the Atlas Wars and the Hyperion Wars, as the two events leading up to the release of the Destroyer and the Warrior are now known. At the bottom of the obelisk, surrounded by two etched wings, was the only name on the monument that also had an epithet coupled with it:

 _-The Guardian Angel-_

 _Who had only known a life of servitude found freedom in death._

 _She guided the war's heroes and gave her life for the citizens of Pandora._

When re-telling the stories of the Wars, the Vault Hunters always credited their guardian Angel and her sacrifice for their cause. They let the people of Sanctuary and beyond celebrate her, while they, especially the Sirens, mourned her cruel life and the necessity of her death.

Angel had heard the stories of her namesake countless times in her nineteen years. She had been given the name because of her mother's desire to honor the lost Siren sister. As if some cosmic force approved of this decision, she herself had been born a Siren. She tore her green eyes away from her namesake's epithet, which she often came to stare at, and glanced the pale blue tattoos that laced her left arm. Her mother, also gifted with such power, called it both a blessing and a curse. It had certainly been a curse for the first Angel, the guardian Angel.

Angel's twin brother had also been named after a lost hero- but his name wasn't on the obelisk. Instead, his figure cut a heroic pose in the Hero's Statue that stood in the center of Sanctuary-Roland the soldier, who had founded Sanctuary's military force and orchestrated her safety during the five years between the Wars. He had been killed right after the guardian Angel. His loss was still mourned heavily now, almost two decades later.

They had both been named after heroes and angels, born to Vault Hunters who defeated legendary monsters. It was some legacy to live up to. Pandora was still largely a lawless planet overrun by bandit clans and killer fauna, but the age of the wars and monsters was over- not really much opportunity to showcase the name, powers, and lineage of Angel's birthright. Sometimes Angel felt a little overwhelmed at this burden; other times, she distracted herself by electrocuting skags to death with her Siren skill, which she called Phaseshock. She looked back at the monument and let the long side of her light brown asymmetrically undercut hair fall into her left eye. While she used her gift to amuse herself, her namesake had used hers to rid the planet of tyranny. Angel sighed.

* * *

Somehow, in almost twenty years, Mad Moxxi had managed to not age a single day. The sultry businesswoman still ran her very popular bar, which had seen a dramatic upshift in business as Sanctuary expanded following the Hyperion Wars. A small shopping district had sprung up around the central hub that was her bar, which had contributed to an economic boom for the flying city. Moxxi smugly managed the coalition of shopkeepers, forming a sort of merchants' guild, which also oversaw efforts to create a tourism industry for Sanctuary and a few other cities on the planet which had managed to grow in the post-war era, such as Overlook and Oasis. Moxxi had marketed it as an "exciting getaway for adventurous explorers" and it had attracted large numbers of rich visitors wanting to have an exotic vacation to brag about at their fancy corporate banquets.

Angel's twin brother, Roland, sat at the bar, swirling a watered-down glass of rakkale as he watched the small whirlpool with mild disinterest. Pandora was still void of a drinking age, but Roland hated the out-of-control feeling that came with an overeager ingestion of alcohol, unlike his wild and hedonistic sister.

"Still working on that? It's been, what, an hour?" Moxxi appeared in front of Roland, shaking her head. Her normal flirtatious nature was abandoned when she interacted with the children of the Vault Hunters, replacing it instead with a more motherly concern. "You're too much like your mother, you know," she clucked softly. "Too concerned with staying in control."

"Angel will be here soon," Roland replied, grinning a little. "She'll pick up my slack." He often found himself in Moxxi's bar, and through the years she had given him all kinds of advice. He appreciated the concern she had for him and his sister, and saw her as a sort of surrogate aunt to whom he approached with life quandaries that he didn't want to ask his parents. For example, how was one supposed to talk to attractive people? He gripped his drink a little tighter as Moxxi walked away, hyper-aware of said attractive person walking into the bar just at that moment.

"Oh, hey, Roland." It seemed that everything else in the crowded bar had gone silent. Roland could hear the chair next to him scrape the floor as the beautiful, grease-stained, tall girl with long, dark-red hair moved into it.

"Hey, Riley," he said, keeping his normal calm demeanor intact while his heart raged away. Another Vault Child, Riley was only a few months younger than Roland and Angel, and was already recognized across several planets as a gifted mechanic. Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her long, graceful hands pull off her dirty mechanic's gloves, revealing pale hands that he imagined were feather-soft.

"I see your gross-ass sister isn't here… Are you expecting her? Because if she's going to be here, I'm gonna need to finish this quick." Roland looked over to see Riley gesturing to the glass of full-strength rakkale Moxxi had just delivered, rolling her eyes and grimacing. Perhaps the largest deterrent to a potential relationship with this girl he had had a crush on for years was the fact that she absolutely abhorred his twin sister, who he was very close with and was infrequently without. Before Roland could respond, Riley had already downed a large portion of her glass.

"Liver like her dad," Moxxi commented from down the bar.

"You know it, Mad Mox," Riley replied casually before taking another large gulp. She turned back to Roland. "Oh, also, that rifle you asked me to mod up, I think I know what I want to do with it." Her beautiful golden eyes began to sparkle as she moved into one of her favorite topics of conversation. Roland sometimes felt like he could get lost in those tiny suns. "So, I can like, at least triple the zoom of the scope, not a problem. And I wanna try to get it so that you can get three rounds off, burst-fire, fast enough to beat the recoil. Problem is, trade-off's gonna be that the mag will only hold those three rounds at a time." She paused, but Roland was too enraptured with her radiant face to respond. "I'll need a Vladoff stabilizer, if that's how you wanna go," she continued. "The Jakobs parts will already suffice for the fire rate. And if you want me to put in some kind of extra kick, just bring me the Maliwan charge for the effect you want."

"S-sounds great, Riley," he finally managed to say.

"Cool," she said, turning back to her drink, which she gulped with vigor. "Bring the parts by sometime today or tomorrow, then."

Roland always got Riley to modify his weapons. Of course, since she was one of the best mechanics on the planet, it was a good choice. Mainly, though, Roland loved having items that she had touched. He would often hold one of his modified guns at night and smile as he thought about the beautiful woman who had put it together for him.

He jumped a little as the girl beside him slammed her empty glass on a table. "Not a moment too soon," he heard her mutter, distaste seeping from her tone. He looked at the door to see his twin sister slowly striding over, tattooed arm swaying casually as her one-sided hairdo bounced in time with it. "Sorry, Roland, but I have to go now. I only keep tasteful company."

"Oh, we all know that you just want to get back to your oily garage to shove more dirty bolts into your saggy pussy, gearhead," Angel replied, just as bitterly.

"Short out any more important generators lately, static-for-brains?"

"I'm saving it for when you're on life support, grease breath."

Riley had risen and both girls were staring with cool hatred at each other. Angel flipped her hair with practiced ease and narrowed her eyes as she stared up at her taller rival. Riley flipped her long braid in response and folded her arms. "It looks better when you have more than half a head of hair," she said, indicating Angel's half-shaved head.

"I think the tattoos and special powers more than make up for it," was the snide reply. "I got something nicer than hair from _my_ mom."

"Too bad you can't fit any class into that fritzing static cloud of a brain."

"I'd ask to borrow some but it seems you're just as lacking, grease monkey."

The snide exchange continued as the two moved past each other. Angel took Riley's abandoned seat and Riley stalked towards the door and left.

Roland had frozen in the stiff tension of the standoff between his crush and his sister. The atmosphere loosened considerably as his dear Riley left, and he turned to watch his sister shake of the catty mood. "Really don't know what her problem is," Angel said offhandedly before waving to Moxxi, bidding her for a drink.

It was true- Riley had always harbored a strong dislike of Angel for some unknown reason, even as children. At first, the Siren had ignored the snide comments, but for the past few years, she had started firing back, revving up Riley's opinion from strong dislike to full-blown hatred. Somewhere deep in Roland's heart he hoped that the two would reconcile, opening the road for him to truly pursue the pretty mechanic.

"What a cunt," Angel muttered, before turning her glass towards the sky.

* * *

trashlady: shut up I think about these fucking babies a lot. hopefully I can tell you their dumb little stories that I think of. this is my first crack at writing fanfiction in like ten years. i am a plant biologist, not an englishist.

trashlady: i also give away borderlands fanfiction ideas and challenges like goddamn candy if you want

trashlady: can anyone guess who the parents are (it will later be revealed but i wanted it to be moderately unclear for this first chapter)


	2. Best Friends Forever

Roland stared at his glass, still half-full with watered-down rakkale. His twin sister had already finished her second glass and was working on her third. He had been quiet since Riley had left, instead letting his vivacious sister chatter on about whatever her short-charged attention span wandered to. She hadn't mentioned it, but he knew that she had been to the fallen heroes' monument. She visited it frequently, and he could sense the sullen sobriety that it instilled in her underneath her bubbling and buzzing exterior.

"Angie," he said softly, cutting his sister off from her theories on how Dr. Tannis would have had sex with her long-lost lover Clork. He reached out and held her tattooed hand. Their matching green eyes met, and he could tell that she knew that he knew what she was really thinking about. He smiled at his sister, his built-in best friend. "We're our own people, Angie. We don't have to live up to anything but our own plans for the future."

Angel withdrew her hand and put it in her lap, staring down at the swirls that marked her as what she was. Of course he brother knew what was bothering her. They were silent for a moment. "Remember when we were kids, Rolly, and you would color in my tattoos with markers if I fell asleep before you?" She asked, a soft attempt at changing the subject, hoping that her brother would understand it was something she wasn't quite ready to talk about yet, even with him.

He let her have the victory. "And remember when I really wanted that remote-control Buzzard for my birthday, and Mom and Dad gave it to me, and I was so excited that you got excited too and shorted it out on accident?" She grinned and rubbed her tattooed arm, remembering that day.

"I used to spark a lot when I got excited. You know, Mom still keeps candles in her study, just in case." Their mother had decided her life's purpose was to gather all information on Siren history and heritage, which involved a lot of transcribing old texts and ECHO interviews. She had made a study in their house to work from, but relying on electricity for night work was a risky gamble when your young daughter was an untrained electric witch. An excited or angry baby Angel would often short out the electricity of the house and other houses nearby. Sometimes neighbors would joke that Angel should be hooked up to a generator to help power Sanctuary, to which her mother would savagely reply that _this_ Angel would never be used as a tool. There was another silence, followed by a small sigh. "You'll know as soon as I'm ready to talk about it, Rolly."

"I'll know before you tell me, Angie."

"I know." She looked back up at her brother. "Speaking of things I know, and probably things everyone know…"

"If you start about Riley, I'll tell Dad you're the one who broke that bottle of expensive whiskey last month."

"I just wanted a _taste_ , I didn't know it would be that strong!"

"So you just _dropped_ the bottle?!"

"I'll tell him you're the one who got skag guts all in that old antique shotgun and gummed it up."

"That was _you_!"

"Dad doesn't know that!" They were laughing. Angel's peal was cut short by a gross snort, which caused Roland to laugh even harder. "Dammit, Mom! Why'd I have to get that trait of yours?!"

"You got her cool Siren powers. The universe had to even that out somehow."

"Yeah, well, at least I got the Siren powers. Riley didn't get that from her mom." The laughter trailed off and Angel turned her focus back to her hand. "She's really the lucky one, though. Being one of six in the universe is kind of a lot of pressure to do great things." She traced a swirl with her other hand. "And then on top of that I was named after a hero. And then on top of _that_ our parents are heroes. And here I am, turning off people's computers because I think it's funny. How worthy of all that legacy."

"Hey… Mom doesn't really use her powers all that much anymore," Roland said, trying to take his sister's mind off of her existential dilemma.

"Yeah, but at least Mom's got a purpose. She's gathering like, all known information about Sirens. And that turned into basically building Sanctuary's library."

"We're still just kids, Angie…"

"We're nineteen, Rolly."

"That's still really young, Angie." He leaned over to hug his sullen sister. "We have so much time to figure out what our purpose is. Do you hear me? _Ours_. What _we_ want. It's _our_ destiny. It's not some cosmic script that we were born to act out, okay?" She didn't respond. " _Okay_ , Angie?"

"Okay," she repeated softly.

* * *

Roland had never been as bothered by the layers of legacies that swaddled them. He was a galaxy-class sharpshooter; he had been sniping since he was a child, spending hours and hours practicing aiming, correcting for wind, calculating Coriolis effect. He had a passion and a purpose, a drive, a goal that was _his_. Maybe that was his lifeline. Angel, on the other hand, was much more whimsical, picking up hobbies and abandoning them with great frequency. She had no real overarching goal or purpose, unlike her dedicated brother. Roland knew that his sister just hadn't found that Very Important Thing yet, and he was pretty sure that would solve a lot of her insecurities regarding the matter; but he did understand that she had an extra blanket of legacy on top of her, her Siren heritage, an identity that he could never fully understand. He could imagine the extra pressure that would add to a young woman already feeling unworthy of both her parents' accomplishments and the legend of the martyr she was named for.

As the twins left the bar, he asked if she minded making a detour to Marcus Munitions- he still needed guns to salvage parts from to give to Riley. She didn't mind. Maybe buying a new gun would help her mood.

"No refunds," was the timeless welcome as they entered the subterranean shop. "Well, if it isn't some Vault Kids."

"Hi, Marcus," they chorused.

"I need a steady Vladoff," Roland reported. "That's all I care about, is the stability."

"Well, then…" A long, shiny sniper rifle was tossed onto the counter. "This one is steady as a rock," Marcus said. "Not a lot of damage, though. So no one wants it."

"That's fine." They haggled about price for a minute, and soon Roland held his new gun.

"I want…" Angel thought for a minute. "To shoot a lot of flaming bullets really really fast."

"What else would a Siren want but a Maliwan SMG?" Marcus muttered to himself before disappearing into the back room. "Have you ever even touched a gun that wasn't made by Maliwan?"

"Why would I want to?" was the cheerful reply.

"Whatever," Marcus grumbled, returning. He placed a SMG onto the counter. "This one is-"

"Ohhh, SubMalevolent Grace model!" Angel grabbed the gun and weighed it in her hand. "A Maliwan classic. I want it." Whether it was the glowing tattoos or the blossoming bosom, Angel never had to haggle with Marcus for as long as her brother. They were soon back on the Sanctuary streets with new purchases in hand.

"Angie, mind if I get one of your old Maliwans to scrap? It's for one of my sniper rifles," he explained, knowing his sister didn't want to be complicit in doing a favor for Riley. "I need a Maliwan effect charge to make it do elemental damage."

"Tell me the purpose, and I'll decide your element," she replied with a flourish of her gun-wielding hand, much to the dismay of those passing by who had to duck away from the barrel.

"Well, I was gonna take it out and bullseye skags in the Highlands-"

"Electricity, good choice." Angel's tattoos glowed faintly as a small spark ran down the spirals from her shoulder to her palm. "The best element, to be sure."

"Mom would disagree," Roland reminded her.

"What _ever_ , Mom can take her caustics all day." She closed her hand over the spark in her palm and the glow subsided.

They were at the center of the city, underneath the towering statue of Roland's namesake, Roland the Soldier. "You can wait here," Roland the second told his sister, gesturing to one of the many benches. "I'm going to take this to the garage. It'll go faster if you don't come with me."

"Don't spend the whole day trying to take home garage garbage, Roland Ezra," Angel said with mock severity, arms akimbo in mimicry of their mother when she would speak sternly to them. Her brother rolled his eyes as he loped away in the direction of the garages. "Garbage, garage… huh, only a letter off," she muttered to herself. "I'll have to remember that one."

* * *

Roland knew that if he took his sister with him to the garages, Riley would just ignore him while she and Angel verbally assaulted each other. The only real chance he had of interacting with the pretty mechanic was if he was without his biological partner. He clutched the Vladoff sniper tighter as he imagined what kind of conversation they could have. Maybe Riley would even ask him to bring her more guns to scrap for parts. Then he could see her even more often. It would be like they worked together… partners.

He practically floated on that thought all the way to the city's edge, where the original garages still stood, unchanged by the city's massive growth. The door opened onto a metal catwalk, under which the sprawling garage floor was filled with the city's mechanics, each working on projects at their benches. Riley's work zone was furthest from the ladder that connected the entry catwalk to the smooth concrete floor. Roland quickly scurried down the ladder and navigated his way through the hustle and bustle of the oil-stained figures whose banter and laughter mixed with the clanging of metal and whirring of machinery in an organic-synthetic aria. He slowed as he approached Riley's bench, again tightening his grip on the sniper rifle, this time for support as he neared the tall redhead, clad in a stained green jumper. Riley hadn't even looked his way to see him arrive, but as soon as he stepped past the invisible barrier that demarcated her personal workspace, she whirled to face him as if she had known where he was the entire time. This was her kingdom, and she was acutely aware of everything in it, down to the smallest wingnut.

"Oh, nice rifle," she said excitedly, wrenching it out of Roland's hands before he could even stutter a greeting. "Nice scope," she muttered to herself, peering through the viewfinder. "Mag size isn't too bad, either… I can use these parts for some of these other projects." She turned the gun over in her hands, running her trained hands over each piece. "Kicker ain't too strong, but that's okay. Everything else is still good enough to salvage after I get the stabilizer. Hmm…" she continued her tactile evaluation as she trailed off, lost in thought. Roland was too entranced by her pretty pale hands dancing across the metal to interrupt the scene in front of him. After a long inspection, her attention returned to the world around her, and she noticed Roland still standing there. "Do you, uh… need something else?"

"N- uh, I mean, well, uh, hey," he stammered weakly.

"Uh, hey," she returned, before placing the rifle onto her workbench among a few more disassembled guns. "Did you, uh, want to put in a charge, too?"

"Oh, well, uh, I can get one by tomorrow," he explained. "I just, you know, wanted to get this to you as soon as possible."

"Oh, okay." There was a long silence in which Roland didn't know whether to leave or stay. It was a good five minutes of him standing there awkwardly before Riley made up his mind for him. "So… you know the Abandoned City, right?"

Of course he knew the Abandoned City. Once called Opportunity, it was the site of the battle where both his and his sister's namesakes laid down their lives during the Hyperion Wars. During that time, the city had been rampant with Hyperion's Loader robots, digistructing continually to protect Hyperion's intended "paradise". After the Hyperion tyrant who started the war was killed at the second Vault, the Crimson Raiders attempted to rout the city of its mechanical guardians, but the digistructing program continued to spew out Loaders. Even Gaige, a Vault Hunter famed for her prowess with machinery, had been unable to halt the program. Unable to halt the spawning of the robots, the Crimson Raiders, along with the mechanical knowledge of Gaige and Scooter, had fashioned a sort of reverse shield to bubble Opportunity in, which prevented the Loaders from exiting the city's premises. Without a way to stop them from digistructing, the city had been left alone within the shield bubble for the last twenty years. Still abandoned except for the robots, today it was referred to as the Abandoned City, if it was even referred to at all. A haunted relic of heroes gone too soon.

"Well," Riley continued. "I've been thinking about it a lot. About that unstoppable digistructing. What kind of program allows for an essentially infinite digistructing of materials? If I could get to it, crack the program… think about what that would mean for Sanctuary. An infinite supply of materials. We could apply it to Crimson Raider weaponry- like how those gun turrets digistruct their ammo supplies? But those programs only allow for a finite number of bullets and it overheats really easily. If I can get at the Opportunity program, if I can figure out how it allows for infinite production, I could make guns that literally never run out of bullets, don't even need a cooldown time." Her golden eyes were wild as she got more and more excited. "It's fucking fascinating, is what it is, I could do _so much_ with that program."

Roland was taken aback by the wild vigor that had taken over Riley. He had seen her get excited about her machinations, but he had never seen it to this fervent extent. She was almost foaming at the mouth. It took him a few beats to collect himself. "So…"

"So I need you to help me sneak in to the Abandoned City. I need someone who can shoot to cover me. You know none of the Crimson Raiders or Vault Hunters, even our parents, you know none of them would let us do it, much less help us. They'd freeze our fast travel access and basically ground us in Sanctuary." She grabbed his shoulders, and Roland found that the feather-soft hands were really just his imagination as the rough vises clamped tighter. "I _need_ to get into that fucking city, Roland."

What could he do? Say no to the girl he had been pining after for years?

"O-okay, Riley. I'll do it."

* * *

trashlady: my fucking babies. there are a few more vault kids I haven't introduced yet, because, well, this is only chapter two. their parentage is a lot more obvious, though.

trashlady: the story essentially is told from the viewpoints of angel2 and roland2. so, we won't know what riley's fucking problem with angel2 is until she actually says it. well, you won't. i already know. but you get the picture.

trashlady: is it getting any clearer who fucked who to make these three babies? please keep guessing i love the attention.

trashlady: if you have any comments at all about the story please tell me. what do you like? what don't you like? should I stop doing something? should I continue doing something? please talk to me I am lonely

trashlady: one final note, I can always give you challenges slash ideas for borderlands fanfiction. if you're into that kind of shit drop a line.


	3. Homefront Storms

Roland ducked to avoid the glass bottle that flew at his head. It smashed on the concrete wall behind him, splashing his back with the small amount of liquid still inside as the shattered pieces clattered onto the floor with the remains of the other four bottles he had dodged.

Angel stormed around their shared room, grabbing anything that wasn't nailed down and tossing it about the room. Things with no value, such as empty beer bottles, were lobbed at her brother, who stood near the doorway, calmly waiting for her to wear herself down. Hurricane Angel's path of destruction upheaved literally everything- the room was strewn with the debris of every possession of the twins, and she kicked through it to find more things to upset. Occasionally she would halt her angry stomping, stare at her brother, and scream some random string of profanities at him before continuing with her riot.

Roland knew that if he just waited it out in her sight, it would be over sooner. Leaving in the middle of her episode would just worsen the experience for everyone by an exponential magnitude. Already his sister's arm was sparking much less than when she had first began the tantrum about half an hour ago. As best as he could figure, there would be another ten minutes before she raged herself into a nap, which would give him about an hour of peace before she woke again, still angry but no longer interested in destroying their room. Not that his sister was _predictable_ , but he _had_ known her his entire life.

The door opened a crack and their mother's voice drifted into the room. "Angel-"

"Not _now,_ Mom, I can't handle my stupid brother's life choices!"

Roland peeked out the slit in the door and mouthed "ten minutes" to his poor mother. There was a long sigh as the door slowly closed. Angel rushed across the room and menacingly placed her face inches from Roland's. "You are _lucky_ I didn't tell her about this stupid fucking idea," she hissed. "You and that _thing_ would be fucking _dead_."

"And _you're_ lucky I told _you_ ," he replied calmly, unaffected by the violent glint in the opposing green eyes.

Angel shrieked and stormed back into the carnage, kicking clothes at the wall.

* * *

In ten minutes, as predicted, Roland was sitting alone in the cramped kitchen of the now-quiet house, soda in hand. He had more or less anticipated this kind of reaction when he told Angel about Riley's plant to sneak in to the Abandoned City to steal the digistructing program. He took a sip from the aluminum cylinder while staring at the refrigerator- a note from his father was posted there. _Back n 3 dys. Emergenc w/slabs. Ordered ur wine. I love you_ , it read. The hastily-written words looped together in a semblance of cursive script, and even though most of the note was shorthand and messy, the phrase "I love you" was perfectly legible and written in full. Roland was always pleased with how in love his parents were. In fact, he knew that these three days, his mother would be throwing herself into her work, because she could really only get large quantities of work on her library done when his father was gone. When he was here, they were frequently together, hunting bandits and bounties side by side. Actually, this window would be the perfect time to invade the Abandoned City- his mother would essentially be locked in her study for three days, his dad wouldn't be around to monitor his vast arsenal of spare guns, and Riley's parents would also be distracted as they filled in for Angel and Roland's father in the military (he was, after all, highly involved with recruit training).

Roland's mind raced as he began to plan. Regardless of the level of her tantrum, he knew Angel would come with them, if only for his sake. It was also the kind of high-stakes adventure she would normally happily throw herself into- really, the only thing wrong was the inclusion of Riley (and most likely also the fact that it was Riley's idea, and that he had agreed to it so readily without consulting with his twin). Once Angel had calmed down, she would grudgingly join in with the small raiding party. Her electric powers would be invaluable for shorting out the robots for short periods of time, allowing the others to sneak past them or put them down, in order of preference. Her short-range tactics would also be good in the event of a fight, coupled with the long-range talents that Roland possessed.

He sipped his soda. Everything was falling very nicely into place.

* * *

Roland had moved into the living room when Angel emerged from her repose. He was flipping the television's channels through the few off-world programs that Sanctuary's satellites could catch as she stepped into the room, hair mussed and makeup smudged, wrapped in her long, old robe. Silently, she stalked over and flopped next to her brother on the cushy, worn couch.

"You aren't gonna get an electric charge, dumbass," she muttered, fixing her gaze on the cartoon that Roland had landed on. "If you're really gonna fuck up robots, you need corrosive." From inside of her robe she withdrew a Maliwan SMG, different from the one she had just purchased earlier. "This is model is called Caustic Gospel." Without moving her eyes from the television, she carefully dropped the submachine gun into her surprised brother's lap.

"This one? But it's-"

"Caustic Gospel," she cut him off without raising her voice, "was probably my top favorite gun last year. Elemental damage over time is pretty astounding." There was a pause as Roland slowly picked up the gift. "That's probably the best corrosive charge you can find in Sanctuary, except for what Mom has. Sure, my electricity can short the robots out, but if we actually have to fight them… well, it will be very bad if no one has a caustic."

"But, you should have one too-"

"I'm going to steal one of Mom's," was the nonchalant reply. "And her Infinity pistol." Perhaps the only non-Maliwan gun owned by their mother, the high-tech Discharge Infinity was an extremely rare Vladoff pistol that not only possessed a strong electrical element charge but also would shoot indefinitely without bullets. It was among their mother's most prized possessions.

"Mom's Infinity pistol," Roland repeated, disbelief flattening his tone. "Mom loves that thing more than, than…" he floundered for a minute, unable to think of a comparison. "More than _us_ , probably," he finally finished.

"Well, unless Riley fucks up _really_ bad and gets us killed, Mom won't even know that it went missing. She doesn't use it that often." Angel sank back into the couch, sighing heavily. "So tell Riley not to fuck up."

The sound of the cartoon on the television was the only sound in the room, but even without aural competition, neither twin heard the blaring sounds that narrated the ever-changing frames. The tension in the room had skyrocketed as soon as Angel had verbally recognized the very real threat of the mission's failure. In his calculations of the near future, Roland had forgotten one key fact- Riley, gifted as she was in the mechanical arts, was an untrained shot and completely untested in stealth and covert operations. Angel and Roland had accompanied their parents on missions for most of their lives, but Riley, who often fought with both her parents and had preferred sleeping in the garages since the age of eight, had not been granted such opportunities. Riley _was_ a liability. Neither sibling had needed to take care of someone else in the field before- they had always gone out with their parents or each other, only people who knew how to hold their own and needed no protection.

Angel grabbed a forgotten pack of their father's cigarettes off of the short table that separated the couch from the television. Standing, she put one in her teeth, tossed the pack back, and fished a lighter out of a pocket of her robe. "I'll be outside," she said emotionlessly.

* * *

trashlady: who else has had a boner since they announced the borderlands movie?

trashlady: it a short chapter. oh well. character development.

trashlady: please talk to me

trashlady: ps i love these dumb babies


	4. Quiet and Riot

Angel took in both the city's vibrant sounds as well as a cloud of nicotine within seconds of stepping outside of her family's small apartment. She tried not to smoke too often, but occasionally, when she was feeling excessively stressed, the warm sting of the burning leaves was the only thing that could soothe her. Why was she so nervous? She had done reconnaissance before, often. So had Roland. She exhaled, watching the white clouds slowly dissipate, their lifespans extended by the heavy air in the city. It was because neither one of them had baby-sat in a danger zone like this before. She was worried about her brother, worried that he would be too focused on Riley's safety to watch his own six. He could take care of himself, sure, but adding Riley to the mix- _well_. That was a whole new story. A whole new kind of dicked-up story.

She wished her dad was here- he was off, somewhere, probably catching a bounty. She could ask him, posing it as a hypothetical question, how one was supposed to take care of an untrained shot in a firefight. Before he came to Pandora, he had been in a military force for a long time- he would probably know the answer. _Maybe I'll ECHO him,_ she thought, _and see if he can talk when he gets home._

Even if he didn't have the answers she needed, Angel always just liked talking with her dad. Even though she and her mother were bonded in sisterhood by the tattoos on their arms, there was just a lot more personality shared between her and her father than with her mother. Taking another drag from her cigarette, she loosed the small ECHO device from her belt and punched in her father's device identification.

"Hello?" the rough voice on the other end of the communication line growled.

"Dad, hi," Angel said, knowing that no introduction was needed.

"Angie!" her dad's slight tone of irritation dropped when he heard her voice. "If you need somethin', better ask your mom, I'm Oscar-Mike-"

"To?"

"Thousand Cuts, darlin', didn't you see my note? I left at o' dark-stupid. I'll be back in three days."

"What's up at Thousand Cuts, something tore up?"

"Got a call from Brick last night; 'parently some his Slab units had some kind of clusterfuck and had some blue-on-blue contact and he's pissed as fuck. ECHO'd me hopin' I could help him haze the stupid out." She could practically see him shaking his head at the stupidity of the least-inept bandit gang on the planet. "These fuckin' rocks." Angel could tell how irate her father was by the frequency of his military slang, a vocabulary he had passed on to her and ironically not the son named after a fellow soldier. "Anyway, darlin', did you need somethin'?"

"No, just wanted to call and chat, dad. I'll let you get back to your drive."

"Good to go. Love ya, darlin'."

"Love you too, dad."

Well, that led to nothing. With the exhausting long drive and then the several days of intense hazing that her father was surely about to put the Slabs through, she wasn't going to be able to have the desired tactical heart-to-heart she needed anytime soon. _Well, I guess I can ask him when he gets back_ , she resigned, inhaling another taste of tobacco. The sooner she could get his advice, the better for her nerves, but sometimes waiting had to be done- her dad often said that the military made one used to waiting, and he had essentially trained her in military style for her entire life. So, she was ready to wait.

Angel stared at the slowly smoldering cigarette in her fingers. Even with the somber start of the day at the heroes' monument, she had felt elated- until her brother had broken to her the news of their impending exploit. It had dropped her like a brick from the edge of the flying city, sent her into a spiraling, screaming rage from which her energy was still recovering. Always, after such an outburst, she was left feeling hollow and drained for some hours afterward. This was often when she smoked the most, pumping the calming nicotine into her veins to dull the frayed feeling of her nerves. She took another drag, drawing the smolder down the remaining length of the cigarette. Holding the smoke in to saturate her lungs, she flicked away the spent cigarette butt into the metal street in front of her. Letting the cloud slip out past her lips and still feeling like an exposed wire, she decided that some more dried tobacco was going to be necessary. Turning to re-enter her home, she found Roland stepping out of the door, pack in hand.

"It's about the time you'd be done with the first one," he said simply as he offered the pack of cigarettes to his twin. "I figured this was going to be a multiple-cigarette thing." Silently, Angel took the offering and stared at Roland, who shrugged. "I know you."

As she retrieved her lighter and light up once more, he leaned against the wall beside her, staring out into Sanctuary's skyline. The old scrap-metal buildings still stood, but most had been added on to with more consistent and shiny materials, which matched the texture of the interspersed new constructions. The apartment complex that housed their own home was one of the old aluminum-paneled buildings, which their parents had settled into long before any of the new towers had been erected. Though most of the other Vault Hunters had moved on to newer residences (most outside of the city) Angel and Roland's parents had opted to be content in their old home.

Roland watched the white clouds float from his sister's lips, sensing and sympathetic of her emptiness but unable to understand it himself.

"So," Angel said after several drags, finally breaking their silent scrutiny of the city. "We have to take dead weight into enemy territory and navigate through without getting caught, and then get back out, without getting shot."

"… Yes. But we're going to talk more about it later. Not now." Not so soon after her last outburst. He knew she wasn't able to handle it now.

Angel blew out another breath of smoke. "I wanna shoot stuff right now. Rollie, let's go see if there's anything on the bounty board."

"Alright, Angie."

* * *

Two hours later, the twins were huddled together in the foothills of the Highlands, watching a group of threshers thrash about along the lakefront before them. A rich elderly couple visiting from offworld, vacationing in Opportunity, had decided to take an unapproved and unguarded safari through the Highlands. Their digistructed Outrunner had been ambushed by a gang of threshers, and if the couple's screams had not drawn the attention of a patrolling Crimson Raider squad, they certainly would have been eaten by the tentacled monstrosities. More concerned with safely returning the overly-adventurous old couple to Overlook, the squad had not neutralized the threshers, one of which had somehow eaten some very expensive heirloom jewelry before their intended lunch had been evacuated. The old couple had placed an ad on the bounty board detailing a large sum for the return of the jewelry and an additional bonus for a head of one of the threshers (most likely to be stuffed and placed on the mantle so that the couple's friends could be regaled with imaginary stories of how they had killed it). It was a frequent sort of occurrence in this new age of Pandoran tourism.

"Dumb fucking offworlders," Angel muttered, digital binoculars held up to her green eyes to help her see the thresher group up close.

"At least it means the bounty board's always full," Roland replied, taking the viewfinders from his sister. "Someone's safari always goes wrong, and we get to shoot what went wrong and get paid for it." He watched the threshers for a moment. "Guess we're gonna have to kill them all to find the jewelry."

A devilish, toothy grin spread across Angel's face as she snapped a large magazine into her Hot Renegade assault rifle. "My favorite tactic." Holstering the Vladoff, she loaded the Fervid Vexation Maliwan SMG she had also brought. "Okay, you stay here and play overwatch with your sniper. Light 'em up with a first wave, then I'll go out. Try to take out as many as you can while I charge 'em with the AR and my Phaseshock. When they get close enough, hopefully we'll have thinned the herd enough that I can finish them with my smig."

Roland set out a bipod stand to stabilize his Gromky Pooshka sniper rifle and focused the scope onto the largest of the threshers. "Do you want me to kill a few or injure a lot?"

"Injure a lot," she replied nonchalantly. "If you can spread out the damage, I can take out a large chunk when I discharge."

"Alright." The soft popping noise of his silencer-enhanced rifle sounded a few times as he loosed several rounds into various threshers. Even with the muffled noise, the impact of the shots still drew the attention of the thresher gang below. With a chorus of raucous shrieks, the gang began to move in the direction of the twins in the hills.

"Hola and adios, motherfuckers!" The words were accompanied by a joyfully primitive scream as Angel leaped down the hilltop, charging towards the threshers. Her assault rifle landed round after round into the slimy scales of her adversaries, splattering their green mucous-like blood across the soft lakeside ground. Her brother's perfectly calculated shots flew by her, framing her mad dash. Each thresher had taken several rounds by the time their charge collided with Angel's, and her tattoos glowed as she unleashed a different kind of charge into the thick of their midst. Already weakened by the tag-team shooting of the twins, Angel's electrical surge easily fried the thresher gang. Their horrible shrieks died off as they all quickly fell to the ground, smoking. Angel, still sparking, was laughing over the carnage. Pulling a long knife out of a sheath on her belt and holstering the assault rifle, she began tearing lacerations down the long bellies of the dead creatures around her, emptying the contents on to the Pandoran ground. The steel blade sparked and sizzled the scaled flesh as it conducted the static that coursed through its wielder's hand. Half of the monsters had already been semi-bisected by the young Siren by the time her sharpshooting brother joined her at the bottom of the hills. He, too, withdrew a large steel knife from a belt sheath (though his was void of sparks) and began to assist his sister in the search for the eaten jewelry. Coming up to the largest of the gang, which he had been watching earlier, he calmly placed his blade underneath the head and began to saw it away from its body.

"Found the sparklies!" Angel's excited voice rang from the edge of the dead herd. Roland looked over to see his sister holding up a large golden necklace covered in thick intestinal goo, the green thresher blood dying her arms and torso. She walked over as Roland lifted the now-severed head from his target. "And here's the head for a bonus, nice." She kicked the headless body and a spurt of blood squelched out of the open neck. She grinned at her brother, a wolfish showing of teeth revealing the joy of bloodlust and carnage. "Let's go get paid."

* * *

trashlady: in which we explore a little of angel's personality disorder ok

trashlady: dead giveaway on angel and roland's paternal lineage in this chapter

trashlady: my boyfriend spent six years in the marine corps infantry, so he has to be consulted for all of my military characters because realism and junk. also he won't let me write a military conflict scene without him.

trashlady: new vault kid coming out soon!


	5. Demons

The two twins sat with their feet dangling off of the edge of the flying city, watching the hot Pandoran sun finally sink behind the horizon, ready to retire for a long night. Empty bottles of rakkale lay around them, and each clutched a yet-unfinished bottle. The twilight gleamed off of their matching green eyes, gifts from their father, as they tried to make out shapes on the far-away ground. The alcohol was as warm as the setting sun, and Angel was sinking bottle after bottle down her throat, relishing the floating feeling that wasn't coming from the city, while her brother was still slowly working on his first.

"The newest Jakobs model," Roland was saying. "It's only being sold on a few planets… I'm gonna save most of this reward money for it."

"I dunno what –hic- happens to my money, really," Angel admitted.

" _I_ know what happens," Roland told her. "You drink most of it away."

"Well –hic- maybe."'

"You really should try to at least cut back," he goaded gently. "It's not-"

"What do you _want_ me to do, Roland, replace it with methamphetamines or something?" She snapped. "Eridium, even?"

"Angie, don't even joke about the eridium. You know how bad that is for Sirens, it took Lillith fifteen years to get clean-"

"Then shut up and let me have the alcohol. I need something, and this is my best option that won't have you freakin' out." Another splash of rakkale went down her throat, its burn a mere ash compared to her scorching tone. "I need _something_."

Without a word, Roland snatched the bottle from his sister's hands. Taken aback, Angel could only watch as he flung it far out into the clouds around Sanctuary, flying a good distance before Pandora's gravity snatched it away. Without sparing a glance to the darkening visage of the young Siren, he pivoted and began a staunch march towards their home. A series of angry shrieks punctuated by the chime of shattering glass and the sharp crack of wild static played as his exit song, an ugly sonata that was the theme of his lost temper towards his unstable sister.

Scarlet lines of blood laced themselves around the blue tattoos on Angel's left hand as her balled fists continued pounding the glass, already in smithereens, into smaller and smaller pieces of sharp dust. Both hands were bruised and bloody, seeming to want the glass dust to be smashed into the very foundation of Sanctuary. It felt good. The pain felt good. It felt _right_. The searing anger in her chest felt even sweeter as her blood dripped onto the city's floor, splattering into the glass dust and creating small, sparkling dots of red. Rage had burned the memory of language out of Angel's brain, and all her throat could do was let flow a long trail of unrefined sound- shrieks and screams and wails. Unbidden, large surges of electricity were coasting down the spirals of her tattoos like trains on an iron track, occasionally derailing from her body and discharging into the suddenly-very-stiff air with unforgiving cracks. She was a living storm, and all she knew was that at that moment, she hated her brother, and she loved the feeling of hating him.

* * *

A rare sight was waiting for Roland to behold back at the family's apartment. Tattered, aged papers and cloths adorned with strange alien text were scattered across the well-worn kitchen table, where sat his mother, studying them. Rarely was the aging Siren found anywhere but her study or the Pandoran wilds these past five years, questing to uncover the secrets of her powerful lineage, a mysterious heirloom she had passed to her daughter and yet was still poorly-understood. Once well-kempt even in campaigns of war, Roland had heard, passion and fervor had chased personal manicure from his mother's mind. Her once-glistening blue hair was carelessly pinned away from her face, as renegade strands stood out in such great numbers that she had the appearance of a thin, frayed mane. The makeup that had been so carefully applied in her youth was now smudged on almost as if by accident, and a habit of infrequent sleeping had turned her smooth skin into a dull, dry mask. He remembered the days years ago when his mother had not neglected her glamour; but when a breakthrough had come in her and Tannis's joint archaeological excavations, she became caught up in the grip of obsession. She poured over texts and tomes, often falling to dreams sitting straight up at her desk (if she slept at all), as her appearance became as neglected as the increasingly-empty place in bed beside the father of her children.

Here she was, the ghost of her former self, for the first time in years not covered in dirt at a dig site or locked in her study. "Mom," he said, softly as possible, as if she were some gentle animal he had hear about on a far-off planet that would be startled by any noise or motion.

She looked up, her pale eyes taking a second to adjust to the change in focus. "Roland," she finally said. "Where's Angel? It's odd when you're not together."

He sat down across from her, casually staring at the manuscripts that blanketed the table. "She's probably having another tantrum," he said quietly. "I told her to stop drinking and threw her alcohol over the side of the city."

"Hm, well, that costs money," she replied, a hint of uncertainty in her voice- she most likely was trying to remember how to interact. "Your dad left for Thousand Cuts, earlier today I think."

"I saw his note."

"His handwriting is so bad."  
"I know, Mom." He let the silence fall. Maya rarely talked with anyone nowadays. Sometimes Roland thought she actually forgot how to speak, how to have a conversation that was more than a passing phrase or a plea for Angel to quiet down. "Maybe, when Dad gets back, you two should go out to Oasis or something."

"Oa… why?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. You're just always so busy, he might like to just spend time with you." Maya blinked slowly. "Just an idea."

"Maybe," she murmured, turning her eyes back to her tomes.

He waited for further response, for his idea to hook into his mother's brain and give her something to think about besides the work that had taken over her body and soul, to get her thinking about rekindling the spark with her long-neglected partner. He watched the pale eyes dart from side to side across the pages… watched her turn a page… watched her continue to read…

As the minutes crawled on without any further words, Roland's hope slowly faded. It didn't look like the idea had even registered with his mother for longer than the brief second it took for her to comment on it. Like everything else unrelated to her task, it was discarded by the obsessive mind that had reduced the once vibrant woman into an almost mechanical husk.

He should have known. He didn't even allow himself a weary sigh as he rose from the table.

* * *

Dried blood caked Angel's arm and matted hair as the slowing shakes of her huddled body indicated that her fit was nearing its end. She lay in a fetal position in a bed of shattered glass, still at the edge of the city. The sun was nearly set, and Pandora's long nighttime was about to begin. The last salty tears of hatred were drying on her face, inked into messy black rivers by her cheap makeup. Her ragged breathing was slowly stabilizing, and the high-altitude winds helped soothe the last remnants of the savage beast within. Angel closed her eyes, doing her best to not feel anything. With effort, she managed to calm the last of her belabored breaths and stop the shaking of her tired form. When she opened her green eyes again to find that the Pandoran sun had finally sunk beyond the horizon, saturating the lawless world in a surprisingly soft twilight.

She lay there for a while more, simply staring at the purpling sky, not wanting to move until she was sure all of her vital signs had returned to normal. One star began to shine. Then another. Slowly, she let her muscles unlock. The glass dust scraped her skin, but the fit had wracked her body so savagely that in the aftermath all of her sensory nerves seemed to have shut down.

Angel often had fits of rage- but this was the strongest one she had experienced. No matter how angry she had gotten before, she had never felt such hate for her own brother, her best friend. _I should probably apologize…_ she thought weakly, knowing full well a simple sorry wasn't exactly enough after the incredible outburst. She rolled onto her back and stared up at the rapidly-darkening sky, her limbs feeling like gelatin, unable to rise. She was so tired.

* * *

trashlady: i'm a piece of shit sorry i have school and a job and pets and a boyfriend to neglect, this story can't be the only thing in my life that i forget about

trashlady: my life priorities are pets job school boyfriend stuff stuff stuff stuff story

trashlady: w/e

trashlady: people still keep liking this story and it fills the cold bitter chasm that should house my heart with happiness so thx

trashlady: idk should we get in to the whole passel of issues that Detached Maya has? i wasn't intending to but hey


	6. Fix It, Forget It

The twilight had sunken into a dark shroud around the flying city by the time Angle was able to pull herself up from the ground. All she wanted to do was go home and sleep in a bed that wasn't made of shattered glass. She looked like an awful wreck- dried blood sat in cracked lines across her skin, larger pieces of the broken bottles were lodged in various places on her body, her hair was matted with the stickiness of leftover alcohol and her own blood. While she was often prone to violent outbursts and raging tantrums, she had never had such a powerful episode before. In the aftermath, it scared her.

Numb and cold, feeling hollow, she trudged through the dimly-lit streets of Sanctuary, the glinting of the new buildings contrasting oddly with the dull metal of the old, but Angel barely noticed the difference in sight as she watched her feet slowly beat the familiar twisted path to her home, through narrower side streets to avoid any kind of confrontation about her physical state.

* * *

A cold and broken angel pressed her shaking body against the inside of the door, happy to finally be in her own sanctuary within Sanctuary. Her room was still half-destroyed- as was normal in the aftermath of such incidents, her brother had meticulously tidied his half of the room, leaving hers in untouched shambles. The idea, she knew, was that it would goad her into taking care of her side. It was not as successful as Roland always seemed to hope. More often than not, she would continue her existence unfazed in the slovenly mess that was her space, preferring to navigate through the heaps of items rather than sort through them. Some of the only military traits her father had not managed to confer unto her were a Spartan lifestyle and a ritually enforced rigorous cleaning schedule- this failure evident in the exorbitant amount of unnecessary and often-unused items and things that had never found a home other than the floor. To Angel, however, the mess was comfort. The clutter was a visual distraction, something for her eyes to keep busy; the alien emptiness of her brother's half of the room, with nothing but _nothing_ to look at, unnerved her, and she firmly believed that if the entire space was this barren she would go mad. _Well_ , she thought, glancing at the dried blood trails still trailing through her spiraling birthmarks, _madder_.

There had been no sign of Roland on her return to the home, which was not a surprise. What was a surprise, however, was the sight of her often-absent mother, pouring over ancient texts in the kitchen. Thankfully, though her body was present, her mind most certainly was not, as she had taken absolutely no notice to the matted and bloody return of Angel, which could have led into a conversation that Angel really didn't want to go into, especially with Maya. With a heavy exhale, Angel left the brace of the sturdy door and slipped down onto one of the mounds of items that created the topography of her half of the room, draping herself over it like a dragon on a treasure trove.

A light beep from her personal ECHO disrupted the heavy, solemn silence, momentarily frightening the young Siren whose fried nerves still felt like they were laying bare to the elements. Slowly, with minor trembling, she brought the device to her eyes to see a new text alert flashing on the screen. While the primary use of ECHOs was for verbal communication, at this moment Angel was glad that the text chat system had still been implemented, however infrequent its use- also was she glad that whoever was trying to talk to her right then had elected to use a non-verbal means.

 _Angie! I'll be in Sanctuary at about sunrise! Visiting Colt and Urs. Haven't seen you in a while, let's fix that!_

It was Priscilla, another child of one of the other Vault Hunters- and naturally, a lifelong acquaintance of Angel's. Unlike Riley, however, this particular vault child was counted a friend by the Siren. The Slab Princess, as she jokingly referred to herself, occasionally ventured from Thousand Cuts to Sanctuary to visit two of her five older brothers, who had been serving in the Crimson Raiders for about five years now, and also to visit the three vault children of the flying city, whom she often called her cousins. Two years her senior, Priscilla was one of the very few people that Angel looked up to, and though their time together was infrequent, it always provided Angel at least a few days of calmness uninterrupted by tantrums and rages. Unlike almost every other person Angel had encountered in her life, Priscilla's answer to frustration was elegantly simple and thoroughly efficient- _go out and hit some stuff as hard as you can for as long as you can_. Truly a Slab, Priscilla, on her visits where Angel was on the verge of losing it as she had today, would take her out to several of the Thunderdome knockoffs that were eternally popular on Pandora, and the two would brawl until Angel's fits of rage became fits of ecstasy, her mood skyrocketed from the adrenaline and the outlet.

This visit couldn't have come at a better time. Growing up at her father's right hand, maybe Priscilla would have some insight into the godawful idea of Roland's- in addition to piling up bloodied bandit corpses throughout the area. Just the idea of Priscilla arriving- in only about forty-five hours now- drove away a good amount of Angel's chaotic emotions, replacing them with excitement at the prospect of double-teaming waves of enemies in an arena. Angel had no idea how she was going to go through two sleep cycles- she was way too excited to see her friend.

 _Prissy- you don't know how much I need this rn._

* * *

By the time Roland returned home, Maya had retreated back to her study, and a now-bathed Angel had slunk out to the living room for television. Dull cartoon voices accompanied the distractingly bright colors that flashed across the screen- a veritable lullaby for Angel. Roland was glad to see she had found her way to a sedative activity. He had purposely decided to be absent upon her return, to give her the time to calm herself. After her outburst on the city's edge, he didn't want to run the risk of that anger returning upon seeing him again before she could normalize her temperament. Seemingly, the tactic had worked.

"Angie," he said softly as he slipped into the room. Her semi-glazed eyes shifted from the television towards him in a greeting, but she made no other efforts to acknowledge him. In others this would be an evident sign of hostility, but Angel was not like others- such apathy was actually a good sign at this point, indicating she was no longer angry enough to re-enter a fit of rage upon seeing him. Understanding her lack of screaming as an invitation, Roland joined her on the couch. "Mom was out earlier," he said passively, not actively trying to initiate conversation, rather, just remarking on an event.

"Saw," Angel muttered in reply, her voice tired and void of any kind of emotion.

He let the silence fall again. The screen changed at rapid rates, almost too rapid for him to even decipher what was happening in the cartoon.

"Priscilla's coming."

Ah ha. She had started a conversation. "Oh, when?"

"Said she'd be here by next riser."

"It's been a while since her last visit. I'm sure you're excited." The timing was perfect. During and after visits from Priscilla, Angel was the closest she could be to stable and agreeable- a state she sorely seemed to need right now. Also, he knew that the thrill-seeking Slab would not only join his and Riley's foray into the Abandoned City, but would also convince Angel to embrace the idea.

"Don't know how I'll be able to sleep twice," she admitted.

"You could always run laps around the city," he replied, referencing an old tactic that their father had semi-jokingly endorsed when the then-small twins couldn't sleep.

"I feel like the city ran laps on _me_ ," was the retort. "Like, I was the shoes, and the whole damn city ran forever on me."

The silence fell again and Roland hoped that it would act like a blanket, dampening the conversation about the reason for her exhaustion from sparking. The best way for Angel to get over things was to simply forget they had happened, or at least to forget why they had happened. As she didn't comment any further, it seemed that it was on its way out of her memory banks.

Angel again was the one to break the silence. "So where were you?"

He shrugged, purely for his own benefit- Angel, whose eyes were fixated on the television, didn't notice the act. "I went to see Mordy, and talk about one of the sniper contests that's coming up." Yet another Vault Hunter, family friend, and Riley's father, Mordecai had once been known throughout the galaxy for his skills as a sniper, and often coached Roland in the trade like a son he never had, as his own daughter had no further interest in guns after building them, much less in the competitive sharpshooting that Mordecai had won his fame in. "The grand prize is a Cobra sniper, which would be pretty nice to have. They explode."

"That sounds fun… just not as fun as anything Maliwan does."

"You know, Angie, you love Maliwan a little too much-"

"Rollie." There was a sense of urgency as she turned to her brother, who was taken aback at the suddenness. "No. Please don't finish that. It will remind me of… _the Trauma_."

Roland knew there was no other way to refer to the Trauma than with the drama and theatrics that his sister was currently displaying. "Angie, _no_. That wasn't what I was talking about, and now it's all I can think about."

"It vibrated, Rollie. It. Vibrated. _I know what that's used for_."

"Stop talking about it, stop talking about it. I want to forget."

"I PICKED IT UP, ROLAND. _I_ WANT TO FORGET."

Despite the obvious horribleness of the Trauma, the two siblings were soon giggling at the shared memory of the event's scarring absurdity.

Wouldn't you also like to forget if you found a vibrating gun in your mother's nightstand?

Even though the Trauma was seemingly ill-regarded, the conversation had lightened the mood considerably between the twins. By the time they were ready to get to their downer sleep, they were laughing and joking as if Angel's earlier incident had never happened- which, of course, was the best way for her to move past it.

* * *

trashlady: some notes on sleeping

trashlady: pandora has a 90-hour day. the planet has no axial tilt, as seasons are caused by the planet's proximity to the sun. this part gets a little bit weird because winter is seven years and summer is three years, which doesn't make a lot of sense because since a single orbit around the sun is one year, having multiple years constitute a single season is kind of impossible. a plot hole if you will. i address this problem by ignoring it.

trashlady: the only thing i utilize from the above data is that the sunrise and sunset times will always be constant, since there is no axial tilt.

trashlady: on a planet with a 90-hour day, i make the assumption that humans adjust to work on three 30-hour cycles per day, instead of one 24-hour cycle per day. Each "cycle" consists of a 20-hour waking period and a 10-hour sleeping period, and this is done three times over the course of a single pandoran day.

trashlady: i based the pandoran clock on the earth military clock- the day starts at midnight, 00:00 and runs to 89:59. also like the earth clock, 00:00 (the start of the day) is not when the sun rises. the daytime period on pandora is a 45-hour period essentially in the middle of the day, with "noon" at 44:30. sunrise is at 22:00 and sunset is at 67:00.

trashlady: to demarcate between the three separate wake cycles and three separate sleep cycles, i have named them. a pandoran timetable is as follows.

22:00 (sunrise)- First wake period begins ("Riser" period)

42:00- First sleep period begins ("Siesta" period)

(44:30- noon)

52:00- Second wake period begins ("Midder" period)

(67:00- sunset)

72:00- Second sleep period begins ("Downer" period)

82:00- Third wake period begins ("Owler" period)

(89:59/00:00- midnight)

12:00- Third sleep period begins ("Nighter" period)

22:00- Riser period begins again

trashlady: obviously, this isn't strict. like on earth, people have their own sleep and wake cycles. this is just a generally accepted timetable.

trashlady: earth time periods (days, months, years) are referred to as Galactic Standard Days/Months/Years and I'm trying to work on how they relate to pandoran time periods but it's tricky and i might avoid it altogether for this story.

trashlady: now that that's out of the way

trashlady: i told you a new vault kid was coming and yes she is named after brick's first puppy. fite me.

trashlady: -laughs at own reference to Moxxi's Good Touch-


End file.
